While Hershey’s has always used both cane sugar and beet sugar, it will shift to using 100 percent of the former because it is non-GM. The issue is that 100 percent of the U.S. sugar beet crop is now GM.The Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper ran an interesting story over the weekend that is of particular interest to the sugar beet industry. While Hershey’s has always used both cane sugar and beet sugar, it will shift to using 100 percent of the former because it is non-GM. The issue is that 100 percent of the U.S. sugar beet crop is now GM. Hershey’s has made the decision to remove an excuse for what is probably a very small percentage of its customer base to not buy its products. In fact, it is very unlikely that most people eating candy a...
Congress is moving forward with its FY 2027 spending bills, while also still working to address FY 2026 funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which is still in a shutdown. The House Agriculture-FDA Appropriations Subcommittee marked up and passed its FY 2027 bill. The House bill prov...
Update for 6 April 2025: Last year, users pointed out differences between the 5-year averages reported in this app and what USDA estimates in its weekly report. The difference exists because WPI calculates average based on the last 5 years of observations for the current week. In cases where ob...
Beef packer margins improved to -$100/head last week, up $28 from the prior week as the Choice cutout stabilized following its brief post-Easter decline while fed cattle prices eased modestly. The cutout firmed to $384/cwt, while fed cattle prices slipped to $246/cwt, allowing packer margins to...
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.